In Egypt and the East 257 



Father has store of blessings ; but man needs chastisement 

 rather than indulgence." 



The Persian sun god, Mithra, symbolizing the creative 

 force in nature, is sometimes represented accompanied by 

 bees ; in some instances a bee is seen issuing from his mouth ; 

 and honey is used in the mysteries of Mithra by the priests 

 of all degrees. The hands of novices are washed in honey 

 mingled with water, by which they are purified, and the 

 hands of those in the highest degree of the order are 

 washed in pure honey. The bull and the lion, so often 

 occurring in the solar myths of Mithra and the bee, give a 

 hint of the wide-spread belief of the origin of the bees from 

 the body of a slain bull. 



In spite of the neglect suffered by the bee in Persian 

 literature, we know that even to this day honey is valued in 

 Persia, and that few of the villages are without their basket 

 hives which yield a delicate and delicious honey. 



Concerning the habit imputed to Persia of embalming 

 her dead in the products of the bee, Herodotus tells us : 



"The Persians cover a body with wax and then place it 

 in the ground ; " and Strabo says their mode of burial is to 

 smear the bodies over with wax, and then to inter them. 

 Again he says of the Assyrians, in reference to their having 

 many rites in common with the Persians, that they put their 

 dead in honey, after having smeared them with wax. 



" That the ancient Persians embalmed the bodies of their 

 great men is believed by competent judges, and a Persian 

 writer says that the substance called artificial mummy is 

 found in those stone vessels in which the bodies of great 

 men were preserved by means of honey." 



China, like Persia, ignores the bees, not only in her love- 

 songs, but in her literature generally, although she is the 

 " flowery kingdom " and all her literature is abloom with 



17 



